SimonsMerc
MB Enthusiast
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2004
- Messages
- 1,147
- Location
- Sudbury, West London
- Car
- Merc S212 E350 CDI BlueEfficiency Sport 256bhp, Suzuki GSX-650F, Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Dynamic
Well, today I finally took my car + tuning box from tandem tuning over to see Charlie (vixpy1) at Surrey Rolling Road, to see whether it really does make a difference to the power of the car.
Let me start by saying that I was convinced in any case that there is a serious power improvement to the car; what I wanted was concrete evidence that there has actually been an increase in bhp and torque.
My auto box was a bit of a pain - it's a tiptronic box and there is no way of forcing it to stay in a certain gear. But with a lot of hard work and playing with the tiptronic box, the winter setting and the ASR off button (and calibrating the rpm and loads of other stuff that I don't claim to begin to understand) Charlie finally got some accurate readings. I'm hoping he'll reply to this and explain exactly what happened, so you guys going for the rolling road day get an idea of what you'll be doing
The readings on the image are the power output at the wheels. This has approximately a loss of 25% from the "actual" engine power (don't ask, I'm just repeating what I've been told ;-). The blue line is the number without the tuning box, the brown line is the number with the tuning box. The higher pair of lines are the torque output at a given rpm (using the scale on the right, in ft/lb), the lower lines are the bhp using the scale on the left. As you can see, the highest point on the lower lines for each shows an increase from 144bhp at the wheels without the tuning box, to 183.2bhp with the tuning box. Allowing for about 25% loss of power to the wheels, this equates to an increase from 180bhp (which is less than the car *should* have normally) to almost 230bhp!
Also, look at the torque graph. The reason my car now drives more like a petrol car is because it's huge amounts of torque are available all through the rev range, not just in the low areas where the engine usually has its peak torque. The torque numbers are "lower" than they should actually be, but the thing that interests me really is the difference between them.
All in all, I'm pretty damn happy with the tuning box - for £230 I've gotten what looks like a 50bhp performance improvement, a whole load more torque all over the spectrum, plus the car uses less fuel. Best investment I ever made ;-)
-simon
Let me start by saying that I was convinced in any case that there is a serious power improvement to the car; what I wanted was concrete evidence that there has actually been an increase in bhp and torque.
My auto box was a bit of a pain - it's a tiptronic box and there is no way of forcing it to stay in a certain gear. But with a lot of hard work and playing with the tiptronic box, the winter setting and the ASR off button (and calibrating the rpm and loads of other stuff that I don't claim to begin to understand) Charlie finally got some accurate readings. I'm hoping he'll reply to this and explain exactly what happened, so you guys going for the rolling road day get an idea of what you'll be doing
The readings on the image are the power output at the wheels. This has approximately a loss of 25% from the "actual" engine power (don't ask, I'm just repeating what I've been told ;-). The blue line is the number without the tuning box, the brown line is the number with the tuning box. The higher pair of lines are the torque output at a given rpm (using the scale on the right, in ft/lb), the lower lines are the bhp using the scale on the left. As you can see, the highest point on the lower lines for each shows an increase from 144bhp at the wheels without the tuning box, to 183.2bhp with the tuning box. Allowing for about 25% loss of power to the wheels, this equates to an increase from 180bhp (which is less than the car *should* have normally) to almost 230bhp!
Also, look at the torque graph. The reason my car now drives more like a petrol car is because it's huge amounts of torque are available all through the rev range, not just in the low areas where the engine usually has its peak torque. The torque numbers are "lower" than they should actually be, but the thing that interests me really is the difference between them.
All in all, I'm pretty damn happy with the tuning box - for £230 I've gotten what looks like a 50bhp performance improvement, a whole load more torque all over the spectrum, plus the car uses less fuel. Best investment I ever made ;-)
-simon
